The Catharsis of the Spirit from Poshlost'

 Recently, a friend gave me a copy of The Philosophy of Hegel as a Doctrine of the Concreteness of God and Humanity, Volume One: The Doctrine of God by I.A. Il'in, translated and edited by Philip T. Grier. Il'in is of interest in part because he is said to be Putin's favorite philosopher. (After about fifty pages, I wonder to what degree Putin has ever seriously engaged Il'in's work.)

Toward the end of Chapter 1, "The Concrete-Empirical", Il'in writes that

One can accept without question, that if the German language had a word corresponding to the Russian word "poshlost'", Hegel would have called this path the path of the "catharsis of spirit from poshlost'".

I first encountered the term "poshlost" in Nabokov's book on Gogol. My recollection is that he defined it as something like "the pretentiously bad". In the chapter notes, Grier gives adjectival counterparts, and also refers to the essay "Philistines and Philistinism" in Nabokov's Lectures on Russian Literature. A friend, fluent in Russia, and for some years resident in Russia and the former Soviet republics, says that the word "is actually used very frequently in spoken Russian".

There are many things to be said about the conceptions of the British empiricists, who seem to be the philosophers Il'in had in mind in the chapter. But the notion that they indulged in poshlost' is odd.

Locust Pods

 The honey locust tree some blocks from here is dropping pods:

Years ago, in Vienna, I saw carob pods sold as "Johannisbrot", evidently from a tradition that these were the "locusts" John the Baptist ate in the desert. The OED gives as its fourth definition of locust "a. The fruit of the carob tree; a locust-bean. b. A cassia-pod, the fruit of Cassia fistula.", going on to say

(The Gr. name ἀκρίς, properly denoting the insect, is applied in the Levant to the carob-pod, from some resemblance in form; and from very early times it has been believed by many that the 'locusts' eaten by John the Baptist were these pods. The application to the cassia-pod is due to confusion with the carob-pod.)

The fifth definition is "Locust Tree".

The confusion of pods carried over to the Americas, very early, it seems. The Audubon Society field guide says that the English settlers in Jamestown named the tree designated Robinsia Pseudocacia, now generally called the Black Locust, "locust" after its pods' resemblance to those of the carob tree.  The  Honey Locust has longer pods than the Black Locust does, with an edible, sweet pulp around the seeds.

Regal Prince Oak

 Some years ago, I noticed a handsome, narrowly growing oak tree on 16th St. NW. The leaves and the acorns suggested that it might be an English oak, but the "columnar" shape was not at all that of the usual English oak. Last month I happened to see a new sapling planted, and saw from the tag on a limb  that this was a "Regal Prince Oak". That is "a hybrid of Fastigiate English Oak and Swamp White Oak". It is handsome, it grows to a good height, and it will not  grow limbs out into the traffic lanes, there to be clipped by buses or trucks.